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Assistant Professor of Finance and Business Economics
Email: miao.zhang@marshall.usc.edu
Curriculum Vitae | Google Scholar Page

I study Labor and Finance with a special focus on using "labor tasks" to open the blackbox of firm production. My research addresses contemporary issues of firms' technology adoption, talent management, regulatory compliance and their implications for finance.

Recent and Upcoming Presentations:
NBER Corporate Finance Conference, NBER Big Data and Securities Markets Conference, Dow Jones Webinar, Chapman University, UMass Amherst, UC Irvine, 2024 ITAM Finance Conference

Working Papers

Generative AI and Firm Values
(with Andrea Eisfeldt and Gregor Schubert)
WSJ | Bloomberg | VoxEU | Barron's (Frontpage Coverage) | Financial Times
~UCLA; NYU; Chicago Booth; UCSD; CEPR Artificial Intelligence and the Economy Conference; 2023 Carey Finance Conference; Q Group; TCU Finance Conference; NBER Big Data and Securities Markets Conference; 2024 ITAM Finance Conference
*Best Paper Award at the TCU Finance Conference

Talent Market Competition and Firm Growth
(with AJ Chen and Zhao Zhang)
~2022 Labor and Finance Group Meeting; 2023 MFA; 2023 University of Kentucky Finance Conference; 2023 FIRS; 2023 UC Irvine Finance Conference; 2023 MIT Sloan Junior Finance Faculty Conference; 2024 ITAM Finance Conference

Wisdom of the Institutional Crowd: Implications for Anomaly Returns
(with AJ Chen and Gerard Hoberg)
~INSEAD; 14th Annual Hedge Fund Research Conference; 2023 ASU Sonoran Winter Finance Conference; 2023 MFA; UT Austin Alumni Conference; 2023 SGF Conference; 2023 University of Connecticut Finance Conference, 2023 CETAFE (Cornell), 2023 News and Finance Conference (Columbia GSB); 2023 Future of Financial Information Conference (FutFinInfo); 2023 Hong Kong Conference for Fintech, AI and Big Data in Business; 2023 CICF; Dow Jones Webinar; 2024 AFA

The Cost of Regulatory Compliance in the United States
(with Francesco Trebbi and Michael Simkovic)
Slides | NBER Digest
~2023 NBER Economic Analysis of Regulation Conference; Conference on Non-Market Effects of Market Power (Columbia GSB); 2023 Tepper-LAEF (Carnegie Mellon); 2023 CICF; University Paris-Dauphine; Vanderbilt University; University of Cambridge; University of Warwick; London Business School; LMU Munich, Stanford GSB, 2023 NBER Corporate Finance Fall Conference

Under the Hood of Routine Share Decline
(with Nir Jaimovich and Nicolas Vincent)
We show that the decline in routine share is entirely driven by incumbent establishments instead of entrants, casting doubts on the "creative destruction" mechanism for recent automation.
Accepted at Economics Letters

Published Papers

The Cross-Section of Investment and Profitability: Implications for Asset Pricing
(with Mete Kilic and Louis Yang)
Journal of Financial Economics, 2022, 145(3), 706-724

Economic Stimulus at the Expense of Routine-Task Jobs
(with Selale Tuzel)
Journal of Finance, 2021, 76(6), 3347-3399
Slides | Appendix | Data | Media (Tommy Talks)

Labor-Technology Substitution: Implications for Asset Pricing
Journal of Finance, 2019, 74(4), 1793-1839
Slides | Appendix | Data | Replication
WFA Cubist Systematic Strategies PhD Candidate Award for Outstanding Research

Trading Up and the Skill Premium
(with Nir Jaimovich, Sergio Rebelo, and Arlene Wong)
NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 2019, 34, 285-316
Slides | NBER Presentation

Local Risk, Local Factors, and Asset Prices
(with Selale Tuzel)
Journal of Finance, 2017, 72(1), 325-370
Slides | Appendix | Data

Suitability Check and Household Investments in Structured Products
(with Eric Chang and Dragon Tang)
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2015, 50(3), 597-622
Appendix

Selected Discussions and Services

Discussion slides for "Follow the Pipeline: Anticipatory Effects of Proposed Regulations" by Chang, Kalmenovitz, and Lopez-Lira
FOM 2023

Discussion slides for "Strengthening State Capacity: Civil Service Reform and Public Sector Performance during the Gilded Age" by Aneja and Xu [Video]
NBER SI 2023

Discussion slides for "The Value of Openness" by Della Vedova, Siegel, and Warachka
MFA 2023

Discussion slides for "Technology-Skill Complementarity and Labor Displacement: Evidence from Linking Two Centuries of Patents with Occupations" by Kogan, Papanikolaou, Schmidt, and Seegmiller
WFA 2022

Discussion slides for "Surviving The FinTech Disruption" by Jiang, Tang, Xiao, and Yao
SFS Cavalcade 2022

Discussion slides for "Labor Force Telework Flexibility and Asset Prices: Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic" by Favilukis, Lin, Sharifkhani, and Zhao
AFA 2022

Discussion slides for "Digital Capital and Superstar Firms" by Tambe, Hitt, Rock, and Brynjolfsson [Video]
ABFR Webinar 2021

Session Chair for 2022 AFA Session "Corporate Investment"

Session Chair for 2022 MFA Session “Investment and Firm Dynamics”

Session Chair for 2023 MFA Session “Bankruptcy”

Teaching and Reading Group

I received the 2023 USC Marshall Golden Apple Award for Core Teaching voted by students.

I co-organize the USC Marshall Macro-Finance Reading Group which meets weekly.